Care Park is bringing Smart Parking to the iconic Queen Victoria Market

Queen Victoria Market is an extensive site, sprawling over 7 hectares of the CBD, and the current 720-bay at-grade car park will be transformed in stages into a new 1.75 hectare public open space as part of the City of Melbourne’s renewal of the market precinct. 

Car parking will be relocated nearby from around mid-2021, with 500 customer car parking spaces to be shifted to a below ground car park just 20 metres from the market on Therry Street, currently under construction at the Munro development.

Smart Parking has been engaged to install overhead indicator vehicle detection sensors. These clever pieces of technology recognise when a car is parked in a bay, as well as displaying individual bay occupancy through LED lights – green means a bay is vacant, red means a bay is occupied. This system enhances the parking experience for motorists by allowing them to tell at a glance if there’s any available spots down an aisle.

As well as displaying the individual bay status via the overhead indicator system, Smart Parking will be installing 17 dynamic signs that will display information on a level-by-level basis. If, for example, level 1 is at capacity, the sign will display ‘Level 1: FULL’ and will also show real-time occupancy of the other 3 levels.

The site will be integrated with a newly developed smart phone app for the Queen Victoria Market car park powered by UbiPark, which allows motorists to find a car park, compare parking rates, pre-book a parking space online and contactless payment for parking straight from their car. Smart Parking is also working with appointed car park operators Care Park to implement a ‘SmartCloud’ digital management system. The SmartCloud system will provide real time updates and can, generate reports on car park behaviour and trends, to provide insights into customer trends and provide valuable feedback.